


To Live Again

by BookofLife



Series: The Unfinished, the possibilities, the end of the roads. [2]
Category: Arrow - Fandom
Genre: AU, Another possibility, F/M, Gen, I'll add more tags, If I continue it, Like, Multi, Other, Ouch, in another world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 07:58:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15659046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BookofLife/pseuds/BookofLife
Summary: If you could start again without going back, if you could brave the worst and the best of something different but similar, if you could have what you wanted in a way you didn't know you needed......Would you?Felicity Smoak should never have been alone; yvet there's a world where she DOESN'T even breathe anymore but should be.A world where Oliver misses her, though they've never met...





	To Live Again

**Author's Note:**

> Another possible story; another time where I just don't know why these ideas pop into my head.  
> Reviews are therapy for writers.

**Left behind**

_Nobody said it was easy_  
No one ever said it would be this hard  
~ **ColdPlay, The Scientist**

∞

**November 2019**

It was done.

Evil Government Subsection disarmed, dismantled and destroyed? _Check_. Elusive bad guy and his eviler anti-vigilante henchmen annihilated? _Check that off too_. City still standing? _Kind of. It’s a beautiful work in progress_ (because if you’d left 5 years ago and then retuned, you wouldn’t recognise it). Saved the day? _More or less_.

Years of work, of effort, finally paid off.

And she had nothing to show for it.

Not for herself.

That was her biggest mistake.

 _Never leave yourself with nothing_. Diggle, still the cornerstone of wisdom in her mind.

Champagne glass full to the brim, it threatened to spill when she waved it in the air; searching for something, _anything_ to toast to beyond the incredible results of her ever-expanding company, the lack of bodies on the floor because - for the first time - they were all in jail and not 6 feet under. Mostly. _That explosion wasn’t- was_ not _my fault_. Nor was the three assassinated politicians that had been on trial for crimes against humanity.

Puffing up her fringe, she looked for that something…

And failed.

_Frack._

Bumping into the desk behind her, she planted her backside before she could tumble over. “Nope. I will not be defeated.” The contents of her glass sloshed precariously. “Here’s to, ah,” blinking, concentrating - which was difficult when one had already consumed a copious amount of leftover whiskey - she blew out a breath. “Here’s to,” her lips pressed together…

Again. Nothing.

She almost smiled, her head tilting when a wave of dizziness hit her. “Jesus.”

Might as well invoke his name; he was the only one listening now.

She really was alone.

She’d never feared being alone. She’d been alone before. After what happened with her father, she’d charged through her teenage life with the kind of resolve that took no prisoners and straight into MIT. Then, after Cooper, she’d applied to Queen Consolidated, living in Starling - a place decidedly different from Vegas - very much alone.

Until a rich castaway walked into her cubicle and changed her life forever.

Two years later, ‘alone’ became something very different. Alone, no longer meant, individual. It meant, ‘without Oliver’.

Five years after _that_ , alone meant ‘safe’.

For others.

Five years walking many miles in Oliver’s shoes and she’d finally found out why he’d tried so hard to _be_ alone in the short years she’d known him, even as it became clear that it was the last thing he’d wanted. Standing solitary in a world where no one knows or loves you. It served a purpose now; as a lesson. _Thank you, Sir Loneliness, for teaching me that no matter how hard I try, I will always lose._ The finer points of failure.

 _Her_ failures. Her losses.

As he’d discovered before he’d died, she now knew why he’d been wrong. So wrong.

Humans aren’t meant to live in this world alone.

 _Breathe_. Yet, like it tended to do did when all was silent, her gaze eventually touched upon the ‘wall’. On its contents.

On the pictures.

They hit her like a brick to the stomach this time instead of the usual slap across the face and she gasped out a, “here’s to you guys,” with her hand jerking up in spasms of honest agony. A salute - a gesture so useless it made her chest feel like it was going to implode with the insanity of it - to them before bringing the glass to her lips and draining it. Shuddering as the alcohol went down. Closing her eyes as her world spun.

 _Ugh,_ the fizz shocked her empty stomach. _Should have gone with Vodka._

That idea, now only added to the agony inside her.

Vodka wasn’t meant to be drunk alone. Wasn’t meant to be drank without-

 _Felicity_.

As she always did - because years of therapy and alcohol and sex and teammates and friendship hadn’t managed to destroy it - she heard that voice, his whisper.

 _Prochnost_.

Her eyes shut tight. _Not you_.

Not now.

She hadn’t the strength, at least not here. At her last. Her last _everything_. But it was a ruthless bastard.

“Since when are celebrations celebrated with vodka?” She mumbled, her gaze partially blurring. Her c’s sounding like z’s.

Placing her glass gingerly to the side, giving it some side-eye - _I’ll never understand champagne and strawberries_ \- Felicity tried to stretch, to move, to do anything except think, but the floor came closer to her face than she wanted.

“Uh, nope,” She’d almost toppled sideways, “don’t do that.” She gripped the metal edge, righting herself. _Breathe_. One breath followed by another. And another. And-

_I don’t want to breathe anymore._

Mouth opening, gaze lost, a sound left her. A moan, a whimper; bile threatening to climb as a lesser voice answered, _so don’t_.

_You’ve done enough._

Her expression crumpled. The wail of misery she’d felt building inside her for weeks - months - hurled itself at her very thin, weakened by the ache, the alcohol and days of no sleep, shields. Every muscle in her face clenched to fight off the scream threatening to tear itself out of her, at the tears that weren’t enough anymore, at the dry rawness of her eyes and the parched need inside her, until her hands reached up to her face. Holding herself.

_They aren’t here anymore._

Gasping - breath pulled in between clenched teeth - her hands reached into her hair, her head coming up, pained eyes coming to look at the memories on the wall.

She swallowed.

A picture of John with his little boy. With Lyla. They were smiling. Happy. She’d taken the picture. She’d made John junior laugh like that. She’d wished Oliver was there in the picture with them. John had looked at her like he’d been thinking the same.

John had been decapitated last year.

With him went her last refuge.

Next to that picture, _Laurel._ Arms around her sister, it was the only picture taken of the Laurel they’d known _before_. Before losing Sara forever. Before Ted Grant was shot in the face. Before her father suffered the heart attack that took him from her. Before Damien Dhark destroyed her internal organs using dark magic. The only picture of her smiling.

Close to John was-

Her throat closed.

Thea.

It… she wasn’t supposed to have become one of them, but her father took away that choice. She hadn’t understood at the time, what that meant. She’d just wanted to escape. Losing her brother - so soon after losing her mother - it had meant the death of who she was. Of who she’d been. She’d agreed to train the way her father wanted. She’d become wild. Dangerous. Reckless. _Hopeless_.

She’d died on their medical table: Felicity’s hands covered in her blood. It was the only time after Oliver’s death, where Felicity believed it was kinder that he was gone.

Roy’s photo stood beneath; in a picture that was just the two of them. Just him and Felicity because… she’d been _his_ final refuge.

He’d been killed two weeks ago. Shot to death because his prosthetic arm had slowed him down, because in the end, what had mattered to him the most, what that she - and her crystal clean vision of Star City - survived. Not him.

People came and went. Curtis, who’d she’d promoted at her company before sending him away, to another subsidiary in another city. For his own safety. His own peace and happiness. Evelyn, whose anger had made her choose the wrong side. Rene, who had been killed in some alley by some guy at some time during the night, because he couldn’t work as a member of their team and his daughter would never know what happened. Dinah Drake, who Felicity hadn’t been able to help. Who’d wanted to lose herself to darkness. Who Roy had to shoot with an arrow so that Felicity could rob her of her voice.

She was a cop in Central City now, nursing her regret. Her anger.

Alena, _who betrayed me_. Who Felicity killed; electrocuting her to death.

Nyssa who made the choice to leave when she discovered that Felicity would never change.

 _“Your fire would burn me.”_ She whispered, her fingers curling around a lock of her hair. _“I won’t rise from the ashes like you.”_

So… what was left?

Raw eyes falling to the stone floor, they remained there. Lost in thought because… she didn’t know.

And she didn’t _care_.

It was over now. There was nothing left of her to give.

Nothing left to save.

Not that she wanted saving. She seemed to do that just _fine_ all by herself. After all, she was still standing, wasn’t she? Crawling out of the wreckage, she’d survived - again and again and again - with only her scars as souvenirs. 

She supposed she should consider it a triumph, that she kept coming back. That she still hadn’t died.

But they’d all managed to die in her arms.

And if _‘I’m just dying in your arms tonight’_ by the Cutting Crew slipped into her brain, then she was forgiven because here she was, alone. Utterly toasted - _like a teacake_ \- and wallowing in her _success_.

The city was prospering.

Even after every homicidal terrorist, every wave of darkness, every rise in gang warfare, every malignant threat, every calamity… now? It was a white-washed brilliance. _Courtesy of me_. Despite its reputation, it had gained revenue. People wanted to live in Star City now that it was pristine, now that employment was near-guaranteed, now that it _owned_ its own self-sustaining energy core, now that medicine had a new frontier.

Yet, even with all that, she only wanted one thing. The one she missed the most - the one she remembered when she was alone - and the one she lost first. The one she’d lived without the longest.

_It’s over._

She was done.

They were dead; all of them. Everyone. Save her. _Lucky me._

So, there wasn’t a soul to share this with.

“What would you do…?” She mumbled to herself.

What would Oliver think, losing Diggle like that? What would he have said or done? Or when Sara fell to her death? How would he have died inside after his sister… What would he have said to Roy as he lay on the pavement, thanking the memory of his first mentor?

He’d-

_Oh._

Yes… she knew _exactly_ what he’d do right now.

But because it was a form of betrayal, her face scrunched up again. “I’m sorry.” She managed to croak out.

No one would ever know.

Star City would never know who Oliver really was, what he’d started, or what he’d sacrificed for this city. How he’d died for it. No one would know of the Spartan soldier who’d died at the hands of a mad man or of any of the others who’d been taken without even a thank you for their efforts.

 _She’d_ been thanked... for making the city _pretty_.

It lanced into her, the injustice. Fingers curling around her glass, teeth pushing into her lip, she threw it into the caverns of her lair where it shattered against ‘the wall’.

She stared at it for a moment, at the way the contents dripped and streamed over one picture like a joke.

The only picture with Oliver in it. The only picture of the original trio they’d once been. The only picture she could stomach putting up of them where she was smiling, wearing a red dress and sitting next to an equally smiling Oliver because Diggle had managed to be unintentionally funny before it had been taken.

Now it was ruined.

And all the grief, the pain, became a cold chill. Numb. _Thank God_.

Replacing it was the kind of dry void she’d been attempting to evade for the last 2 weeks. The extremely unhealthy kind for those who have a job to get done.

Well, the job was done…

It was all too easy to fall into - she wanted to - because there was no way she could take the bottle of champagne, the vodka, the whiskey and the lighter fluid kept in the back and douse the entire place, if she’d been _feeling_. There was no way she could rip the monitors away from their cables and throw them into her servers like that otherwise. No chance of her yanking up the wires to pour alcohol over them all and watch her world die in spurts of electrical charge. Never could have be taken Nyssa’s gift - a staff - and use it to destroy the glass cabinets housing the suits of the all the heroes who’d come and gone from this place-

Except maybe she wasn’t soulless yet because, when she reached the cabinet housing Oliver’s old uniform, she felt like she’d run into a brick wall. Her body jerked into complete stillness as she stood there, panting at the memories that slammed into her.

_“How do I look?”_

_“Like a hero.”_

She stared at the green leather for a few seconds…

Maybe not everything could be destroyed. Maybe one thing could _never_ be destroyed.

Dropping the staff - it no longer mattered - she flung open the glass door, pulling out the mannequin and letting it fall to the floor as she tugged off the jacket she’d tended to for years. Bringing it to her face, she inhaled the echo of a scent long gone - of sweat and forestry - accompanying a faint leather polish and some dust that clung to its inner softness.

She pulled it across her shoulders, fastening the front zip.

It took less than minutes after that; the place she’d practically lived in for years, looking… unrecognisable. But she’d come to realise that home was a person, not a place.

Standing at the entrance, watching the first licks of light coming from the baby flames already erupting in the corners, she took it all in; nostalgia and grief hitting her with all the grace of a bull and, for once, she let it.

“We did good guys.” She whispered through dry lips, knowing it wasn’t enough. They’d had to die so that a city could live.

It wasn’t right.

She missed them, wasn’t whole without them.

And she was done.

Sighing - tired and wrung out from the stress of the last few weeks - she threw the final lighter in her hand on the books she’d stacked near the vents. Even if anyone did notice this place going up in flames, there’d be nothing left for them to recognise or tie to her… it would be a ghost story. _Let it die._

Closing down security - _shutting down_ , the automated voice hailed her off - she walked towards her Ducati, catching sight of the pictures that had started curling at the ends from the heat; the board bronzing beneath…

Her only picture of Oliver was the first to turn to ash as she zoomed out.

 _Irony_. Maybe.

**∞**

_The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;_  
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;  
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.  
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

**W. H. Auden**

**∞**

**May 2014**

_No…_

Staring dead ahead, gasping after her sprint - her heart crashing in her chest, her lungs refusing to fill, body turning to stone - she saw him there in the distance. Lying on the beach. Unmoving.

Dying on the sand.

“No.” It was inaudible against the pounding in her ears, the roving waves of the ocean to her right. “Please.” It felt like… like she was being scooped out with a spoon. Piece by piece.

And it didn’t matter.

When it came down to it, they were specs of dust: motes settling on the sand. In the grand scheme of things, he meant very little.

Except to her, he was the sun and she’d revolved in his orbit for 18 months. She just hadn’t known she had. He’d filled her life with colour.

Now the light was going out and finally she understood.

_He can’t. Not like this._

It was unthinkable. It was her recompense for doing nothing when she could have done everything. _Fear is the mind killer_. But she’d been sure…

She thought they’d have time after this. She’d believed they’d all pull through in the end. She’d believed in the mission: she’d believed in _him_.

Then she’d heard his cry of pain over the white noise of the earpiece in her ear and she could only wonder at why she’d thought any time at all was enough time. A minute, an hour, a day, a year; it would never be enough.

She’d put her faith and her heart on the line and believed both to be stronger than they obviously were. As if her will alone could grant them victory.

_How did I ever grow to be so conceited?_

Scared to death, she saw his figure stir. A hand, an arm, moving; only to fall back on his body.

It made her _go_. Made her run. “Oliver!” And she knew it was useless to shout, to sprint to him now in some magical hope that the red stain gathering on the soil didn’t mean Slade hadn’t gutted him after Oliver had destroyed the Mirakuru in a haze of fire.

She hadn’t been there.

 _Run_. “Please.” It tumbled out, and it felt like someone was sitting on her chest. If she just ran faster, if she could just put her hands on his wound, he’d be fine. “ _Oliver_.”

She skidded to a stop, dropping to her knees next to him.

He looked cold. Still.

But he was breathing. Barely.

“Oliver?” Touching his arm, his hand, his neck. “Hey, you need to talk to me, ok?” She sniffled pathetically, pulling him back by his shoulder so that he wasn’t lying on his side and she could peer into his face. “Talk to me.” She begged.

_Talk to me Felicity._

Heart pounding, “Oliver,” she couldn’t stop saying his name. “Where… where are you…”

Then she saw. Her thudding heartbeat dropped like a stone.

His chest was a mess. There was nothing she could do.

Logically she knew that, but everything she was, rebelled against the fact. “Dig!” It was a shriek and she didn’t care how bad it sounded; how it stabbed the air. “Call for help!”

Call Argus. Call Lyla. Call Waller. Call Sara, bring the League. Call someone who’ll do _something_ , anything. Surely someone, somewhere owed them? There had to be a person who cared enough to break rules and shatter fate.

John was already there, hovering over them; his brown skin paling, like he knew too but, like her, was still trying to believe in miracles. “Give me a second.” He mumbled; a real fear in his voice before he was speaking into the radio. They’d only been minutes ahead of the chopper from Argus.

It should be here any second now. _It’ll come; it has to._

She blocked out whatever he was saying because Oliver’s eyes were open. Because at this moment, he was only person in the world who deserved all the attention and love it could give but had to settle with her. Short change. “Hi.” She whispered, smiling brokenly at the wan realisation in his face. Staring unblinkingly though her glasses. “You did it. You stopped Slade.”

And he’d been killed for it.

_Please… please God._

God wasn’t listening.

Lips pressed tightly together, clamping down on the wave of desperation and pain that was starting to climb - of true panic - her hand touched his face; shaking fingers ghosting over his cheek and his eyes found hers. Didn’t blink. Didn’t flicker. They were _concentrating_.

She swallowed, finding it hard to breathe. “Oliver.” Fight. _Fight for me._

But he looked so tired. _Soft_. The kind she could fall into and never climb back out of. And dimly… surprised.

She would forever regret not asking why.

Half in her lap, mouth slightly open, his eyes slowly moved over her face; taking her in. A breath rattled through him, his pupils broadening-

Like he was starting to sink into the black.

“No.” It came out like a moan; her free hand pushing down hard on his ruined chest, her head bowing towards his. “Not yet.” Not like this, not now. “Stay with me.”

He deserved more.

But his finger was cold as it touched her cheek; something he’d never done. The ache was exquisite. He would never do this again. The first and last time. It numbed her. Froze the world around her. Turned the blue sky, grey. He was so large in her life, in her memories, that in that moment, he felt irrevocable to the planet.

So, how could he be leaving it like this?

A noise left her - something shallow and pleading and painful - as she watched his eyes follow his own finger trace her skin.

His irises had lost their colour.

He liked his lips, face slackening; as if he could barely manage without giving into the need to close his eyes. To give into the forever sleep. It was too fast; there was too much to say and do, yet she didn’t speak. Didn’t know where to start. It was too late for the emergency transport Dig was trying to hail, but Oliver still managed to _look_ at her like that. Like she was miraculous.

Like she stunned him and warmed him all at once. Like _she_ was _his_ sun, just as he was hers.

Her lower lip wobbled; the tears she’d been holding back spilling over. “Please don’t go.” _Don’t leave me here._

Something hit him then; she saw it in his waning features, expressing as much as they could. In how his eyes widened. Like he’d grasped something. Realised something.

In that single second, he looked more awake than he had in the near-two years since his return to Starling. In the seconds before he died, Oliver looked alive.

He mouthed, “ _Felicity_.”

His fingers ghosted her mouth and it ripped through her. It was slipping through her hands like sand in a sieve: she already missed the sound of his voice. The need to hear it, fisted like a vice in her chest. The knowing that she wouldn’t again because he didn’t have the life in him to voice a single syllable of her name.

But he didn’t try to talk again; he couldn’t. Just as she couldn’t reassure or love him, when he needed it - deserved it - most.

His eyes were moist. A tear - he could only manage one - slipped out of the corner of his eye, like he knew. It looked like an apology. It looked like regret.

Then he smiled the smallest, most heart-breaking smile she’d ever seen. It destroyed her, that smile, because she remembered the one he’d given her the day before.

He’d been wrong: _he_ was the light. He’d always been the light, not her.

A rasping breath left him… then his hand fell, hitting the sand with a quiet thud. His eyes unfocused. They turned soulless, without depth or any kind of feeling at all; like marbles looking at her but no longer _into_ her. No longer speaking to her soul. Silent. It was how she knew he was no longer there. There was nothing see anymore.

He didn’t move again. Just his hair, blowing lively - cruelly - by the deep-sea breeze, but he wasn’t there to feel it. Or to feel her fingers run through it for the first time. To feel her warmth, her skin against his.

He’d left.

“They’re here!” Diggle was shouting to her from several yards away and she could hear the blades of the copter whip the air. “Felicity, they’re here: he’s going to be alright!”

No, he wasn’t.

He’d left her.

**∞**

_It’s done. I’m done._

**Felicity Smoak**

**∞**

**November 2019**

She wasn’t sure where she was going - and driving half-drunk wasn’t safe but she was done with safe - but she knew what she wanted to do. Now that she’d decided however, it hit just how many ways there were for a person to kill themselves. Letting herself crash into traffic felt awfully tempting in its easiness but she didn’t want to hurt anyone. Jumping off the main bridge was another idea… but drowning? _I’d rather not be kept waiting if it’s all the same to God._

Where was the hail of bullets when she needed them?

Except a call from Barry made sure, once again, that she couldn’t have what she wanted: he needed her help, which meant she had to keep breathing when what she wanted was to die.

So, she’ll never really understand why she turned around to Star City’s entrance, why she shot off into the night, towards central city. Why she’d choose to do that instead of… she’d never understand.

He was in the lab and when she arrived, stepping out the elevator outside of the main lab however many floors underground, she realised that she might get her wish after all.

“Barry?” She called over the whine of the security claxon and-

Well, you know, the whirling vortex of death making the world shake and just hovering in mid-air on the other side of the protective glass.

Then there he was. “This wasn’t supposed to happen!” Barry shouted to her when she moved over to him. “I ran every diagnostic and permutation but-”

“It doesn’t matter.” She sounded eerily centred, even to her ears. “How do we shut it down?”

There was a too long pause where he just looked at her, before slowly shaking his head. “We can’t. Not from in here.”

But to step inside meant-

_Oh._

“I’ll do it.” She immediately told him; she didn’t even care why this was happening. “Just tell me how.”

She watched his throat work, watched his eyes start to well up, watched him allow her to do this in his place. “…I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.”

She really wasn’t.

 _God, that feels good to say_. ‘I’m not’. _What a rush._

It was like going to bed after being forced to stay awake for months. Peace was coming. _I’m going to see them all again._

Suddenly movement was easy and when she yanked shut the door to the next room before another word could be spoken, she braced against the strong gravitational pull of the anomaly… and she wasn’t afraid. When she raised the levers that would set of a chain reaction that had a 91% chance of killing her, she felt nothing but relief.

Barry had a child on the way. He’d be okay now. Dying to save the happiness of a child, was probably the best way she could have hoped to go.

And when the vortex ruptured - a deafening crack that sounded as awful as what she’d imagined a volcanic eruption to sound like just before it blew - everything blurred into a white nothingness that slammed into her from all sides. As the skin on her bones felt like it was being pulled off… she realised she’d be okay now too.

And she smiled-

**∞**

_(It is a kindness, to let them go. Let them live. They don’t want to be here._ **(Me)** )

**∞**

-But Felicity didn’t notice.

The moment she moved beyond the glass barrier, Barry lost his fear. His facade. Didn’t see the care on his face, the resignation or the sorrow as he watched her go through the steps.

She didn’t see his hands working over buttons and switches. Didn’t see Iris pop from out of nowhere and silence the alarm. Didn’t see them simultaneously shut down the facility, thereby causing the singularity beyond the glass barrier to be yanked out of existence and pulled back _home_ , but not before it took everything in the vicinity with it.

Taking her.

“Bye Felicity.” Iris whispered.

Barry closed his eyes. _Goodbye_. He cleared his throat, but it didn’t wipe away the wetness on his face; not even when he felt his wife turn to him.

“You did a good thing.” She whispered, a hand soothing over the muscles at the bottom of his back.

Did he? “I hope so.” He breathed, eyes opening to look out at the blissful silence. “But if I’d done something sooner-”

“Don’t do that.”

He shook his head, feeling the deep reservoir of love and affection for the woman who would forgive his many wrongs despite their consequences. “She came to me, Iris.” He swallowed; looking down into his wife’s eyes. “After John died last year. She _begged_ me to go back and make it right, to save Oliver and stop it all from happening.”

Every crappy wrong doing that might have been prevented if the better man - if Oliver - hadn’t died five years before. If he hadn’t been alone.

The memory of Felicity - on her knees and beyond rational thought, of the tears on her face and the way misery pulled at the last piece of innocence she had left - asking that of him, because she’d known about what he’d done to bring _himself_ happiness, and staring up at him with retched awareness, as he told her that he couldn’t.

He could for _himself_ but not for her.

It had started to build then, the sickness. Denying her had haunted him; had torn at his soul. Knowing that if he’d lost Iris, he’d have done it in a heartbeat had kept him awake for days because… he could have. He could go back right _now_ and change history; save Oliver and give Felicity the same peace he now had.

But if he did, _other_ people might die instead. A lesson he’d learned with his own selfishness. And Iris… they’d lose the child growing inside of her now.

Yes, it was selfish. He’d choose Iris every time. _I’m sorry_.

But he had the power to do _something_.

It had taken months before he’d finally figured out what, and it was just in the nick of time. The look in Felicity’s eyes just now when she’d walked into the lab - a ghost in a painfully familiar green hood - would have sent real fear for her through him, except, he already knew just how far she was into her own darkness.

When the last of her hope died when he’d said _no_. When Roy’s death had decided her own end.

“God, I hope she finds what she needs there.” In the place where he’d sent her.

It went against _everything_ he stood for, but so did running backwards through time. He owed Felicity at _least_ this.

Iris’s hand slipped into his, pulling him back to her. His strength. “I think she will. She’s… _strong_.” The pause had been because, how did you encompass the strength of an IT tech who’d changed an entire city, who’d fended off monsters and done the impossible?

You couldn’t.

Barry sniffed; his voice cracking as he stared one last time, into the dim nothingness beyond the glass. He’d miss her.

He already missed her. He’d missed the light in her for a while now. Missed-

_“…Like a flash.”_

The man who’d seen what she could become just by **looking** at her.

“You think hope so?” He asked his wife.

She nodded against his arm. “I know so.”

_Please let her find it._

Her happiness.

In a world that had lived without her for too long.

∞

 _I can't go on._  
I'll go on.  
~ **Samuel Becket**

∞

**2014**

_“…To die so that others may live.”_

He’d said that. Called it, ‘The essence of heroism’ and she’d _demanded_ different. She’d asked for change. He’d listened.

Later, when they’d been as alone in the Foundry as they could be - when and Dig had been filling bags with ammo and Laurel had been on the phone to her father - Oliver had told her.

_“I don’t want to die down here.” And it came from somewhere deep, that small voice. “But no one else should suffer because of Slade.” Shifting from one leg to the other, he leaned closer. “You said I shouldn’t just accept things the way they are.” His eyes fixed to hers; no blinking. No evasive manoeuvring. He was letting her see. “I don’t know how to even start doing that… but I’d like to try. Will you help me?”_

_When she whispered, “yes,” it felt like she was offering so much more._

_And maybe he knew that. Maybe that was why something easy and sweet worked its way into his face, despite his mother’s death the week prior._

When Oliver died, those words ceased to mean a thing. And the smallest possibility between them became vapour and ashes in her mouth.

On the rocky shores of Lian Yu, Oliver and Slade killed each other. He died on his birthday. Of course, he did. Only Oliver Queen could reach _that_ level of gut-wrenching.

But she’d asked him to promise to come back. And he had. He’d _promised_.

He’d said it would be fine, that everything would be alright.

He’d said he’d wanted to live his life.

_He broke his promise._

He’d lied.

Then he died in her arms.

The world didn’t stop turning, nothing dramatically quietened now that he was gone, no sudden alteration to spark the death of a man no one really knew anything at all about. He was just gone.

Slowly, over time, he took her world with him. Piece by piece, like a collapsed star.

One shattered life at a time.

∞

_“…Somebody did come.”_

Xavier, **Logan**

∞

**November 2019**

She awoke on her back, looking up at the sky.

 _I’m confused._ She squinted at the stars, _and kind of tipsy._

She wasn’t supposed to wake up at all.

It made her cough, when she tried to sit; blearily looking about her. _Where am I?_ Wherever here was… _Used cars?_ A blurry sign she tried to focus on said:

**Mo’s Lot, Starling-**

Starling City.

_Starling._

_It’s Star city, not_ \- it had become Star City after the renovations started.

Something in her gut tensed. An instinct she listened to.

 _Where am I?_ Because she wasn’t in Star City. She wasn’t-

It was off, all of it _wrong_. Even the smell in the air, because for one thing; Star City no longer really smelled of much at all. Now? Oil, rain, garbage and something like… smoke? It infiltrated her nostrils and took her back to-

_“It’s Girl Friday and the answer is NO.”_

Simpler times. Better times. If only for her.

Heart pounding, she pushed up - kneeling before standing - and she stared around her before moving, before walking. Following a footpath.

It was dark: too late for the used car lot to be in service and when she left it, she found herself freezing on the spot as stepped foot in-

The Glades.

_What the actual frack?_

There were no Glades. Not anymore. Not since Ra’s had decided to kill 50% of its population. Her company had repaired and refurbished what was left, merging the remnants with the city as a whole but this-

 _It’s… it’s the Glades_ , and she couldn’t help the shock that stole her, watching the homeless huddle around garbage fires as she managed walked by. Seeing signs of misuse, decay and deliberate violence on the walls and very foundations that she thought she’d forgotten about.

As she glimpsed a gang of youths smoking their joints, as she moved past streets and _streets_ of boarded up shops… well, boarded up and abandoned; empty and sad. As an old school stood haunted and void of children and the energy they could create, save for the flickering lights in the windows that told of small fires.

A homeless drive - a caravan with the doors open and a few people moving in and out of it with what smelled like beef and bread, wafted from inside - was set up and she frowned because, it looked like a regular thing.

Pre-dawn delivery vans parked outside of businesses that had seen better days, unloading their goods for the next day.

Bike messengers already up and earning a measly pay check.

There were no street lamps, no traffic lights here.

The poorer people were literally coming from indoors and starting fires in the middle of the street to keep warm.

There was an odd amity that had never existed in the Glades she’d known before, which was roughly when she realised that this _wasn’t_ the Glade’s she’d known before. This was a step beyond poverty and oppression and fear.

Something devastating had happened here.

Buildings in the distance indicated that it wasn’t _all_ like this but… she didn’t know.

She walked for a while; her mind blank. Unsure of what she was seeing or where she was going-

Until she found what appeared to be the edge of the Glades, because there were armed police guards - possibly military - stood, sentry but chatting to each other, at the end of a road. She didn’t recognise their uniforms. Didn’t understand the odd impartiality in the air. Didn’t know why they were needed.

They were easy to slip for her, but-

_What’s going on?_

She needed a vantage point: she needed up high.

The clock tower looked the same as it once had, years ago; abandoned. When she reached the top, Felicity looked out at the world and gasped.

The city looked split in two: one half looked very much like any city would or should. The other? Grey and bronze: broken buildings, makeshift metal works, brick and fear with sparks of rustic life. Not the white washed and ultimately bleached brilliance she’d helped create. Not the clean, harshness it had become. City lights were sporadically littered here and there in the half that felt like a bomb had gone off in it...

It was incredible.

She’d started to hate the perfection she’d built, where all remnants of a time long gone had been taken away. Here, there was an odd warmth to the mess of it all. But it didn’t escape her notice that there was something very wrong with the city.

 _Had_ a bomb, gone off? Did the Undertaking take place? An EMP? Or had it just been mistreated?

This wasn’t Star City.

Barry. _What did you do?_

She knew him. If she’d stopped to consider for a second, she would have noticed his own melancholy. Would have realised the ridiculousness of shutting down the levers to the drive in that room; they wouldn’t have stopped a rift like that. But you don’t see the world around you or the people in it when you’re trying to leave it and them.

Why had he sent her here?

_She watched his throat work. “…I’m sorry.”_

That wasn’t grief or shame of failure or sadness, not really. It had been a goodbye.

And what had he once told her, about the 52 earths?

Was this one of them?

“Where am I?” She whispered to no one, staring out at the view.

Why here?

∞

 _Memory can only tell us what we were,_  
in the company of those we loved;   
it cannot help us find what each of us, alone, must now become.   
Yet no person is really alone;   
those who live no more echo still within our thoughts and words,   
and what they did has become woven into what we are.  
~ **Jewish prayer**

**∞**

**2014**

She didn’t remember much about Oliver’s funeral, except that Diggle had found her there afterwards. Stood at his grave. Alone. Cold.

Night had fallen by the time he had but, their nights were free. No more vigilante night life. No more watching Oliver defy the odds on a camera, no more childish belief that he was somehow untouchable. No more mission. No more purpose. No more of the original gangsters in action to thwart evil.

She’d gotten stuck on that, staring down at his name carved in stone.

Years later, though the memory of the two weeks following finding Oliver on Lain Yu were blurry at best, she could still remember with merciless clarity, the way Thea had crumbled when she’d had to tell her that her brother wasn’t coming home this time. No, he hasn’t been lost at sea. No, he’s not skiing in the Alps. He’s gone. For good. He’s _not_ coming back this time.

She might as well have murdered Thea herself.

Laurel had been similar. Sat beside Thea, she hadn’t believed her either. _He’s come back before_ , she’d maintained. _He’ll do it again_.

Their logic died when Felicity showed them his body.

By then Felicity hadn’t slept in days or eaten much more than a few bites of a cereal bar, so she wasn’t sure how she’d managed to stay standing as Thea had all but fallen into her. She’d lost her mother. Any hope of having a future where she could smile, died. She didn’t scream, didn’t fight; she just shattered. Laurel had slowly sunk to the floor and Felicity thought she’d understood that move too: it was truly gone. The possibility Laurel had probably been holding onto since Oliver’s return.

All Felicity could give her was a body, an apology and regret. And Felicity had been beyond tears.

It was as if Sara had already known when she found out. When Felicity had walked towards her, Sara’s eyes had been the kind haunted Felicity hadn’t understood until just then. Suffering; forever suffering. It also hadn’t surprised Felicity when she’d kissed her; hoping to push away the black for a while.

John… he’d been silent.

On the beach, once he’d realised that his shouts were for nothing, he’d just stood there. In a way, his reaction had been the healthiest. Just pure grief. They hadn’t managed to save Oliver’s life, but Diggle had believed they’d saved his soul. That he’d felt the light, even if only for a while. In the following years, it would eat at him. That Oliver had died in the fight to save himself. Eventually, he’d see it as a failure.

It would consume him.

But he never found out, how much it sickened her that he thought they’d done enough for a time.

For Roy… the death of his mentor had left him pathless and that connected them. At first, he’d helped pull his home back in order, but the night - weeks after the funeral - she’d found him geared up, wearing his shiny new mask and the bow Oliver had made for him, as he tore through the Glades in an attempt to carry on in his mentor’s name, she’d felt it like a hammer through her chest.

They could continue in Oliver’s stead.

Did she even want to?

In actuality, she shouldn’t have been in the Foundry. Shouldn’t have been on her monitors. shouldn’t have been sleeping on Oliver’s cot in an effort to keep him with her for longer. John hadn’t found out about that either. Somehow Oliver’s death had made a wall appear between her and Diggle. It wasn’t as if she unhealthily refused to live her life, but the death of her purpose - Oliver - had screwed everything up. She was lost at sea without an anchor. Heartbroken, because she’d secretly been in love with Oliver and could never tell him. Would always wonder if it could have changed anything. If John, who she’d made take a few weeks away with Lyla, found out about her habit of keeping the light on in the Foundry, _he’d_ be heartbroken.

He’d find out just what Oliver had _really_ meant to her. He’d guessed, but he didn’t _know_. She’d decided against letting him find out, for his own sake.

Roy’s insistence on keeping Oliver’s memory strong, made something in her leap at it… just as the rest of her, begged her to stop. The pain of carrying Oliver with her was undeniable. The very idea of letting him go completely was impossible. Too much.

It helped that the mission had become just as much a part of her as it had Oliver.

It took them months - she and Roy - to convince DIggle to continue with them. Eventually they were joined again by Sara… then, surprisingly, _Laurel_. Being a lawyer basically meant that they could feed her criminals for breakfast, lunch and dinner and the woman had needed the focus.

Others would come later.

It helped.

She could breathe again. She could dream and hope and smile and eat. She could talk about him… she could mourn.

But he never let her go.

Because even after four years, after everything they would go through, Oliver still spoke to her. It was wrong. It was weak. It was scary. But eventually it stopped being so and she pushed on.

Hearing him.

∞

 _The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not 'get over' the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again, but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to.  
_ ~ **Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and John Kessler**

∞

They hadn’t understood how supremely out of their league they’d been, until the end of that first full year without Oliver. Until she’d had to start training _herself_ , just to survive. Until she’d had to be just as uncompromising as their enemies. Until her intelligence beat a league of trained warriors, as ridiculous as that might sound.

Until actions had consequences.

All the while, she missed him. She _just_ missed him. Like an ache she couldn’t sooth, a hole inside her where he used to be. She missed him.

Wanted him to come back, like a miracle. To make it all better.

She hadn’t felt safe since he’d died. She never would again. He’d done it effortlessly. He was irreplaceable.

After one year passed, Ray Palmer gave her his company and a kiss on the cheek. He’d wanted to marry her, just one year after losing his wife. She’d said no, because one year after losing Oliver, she was still unable to love any other but a dead man.

She hated him for that.

Concentrating on Palmer Industries, meant that she could turn it on its head, clear out the rubbish and start afresh. Innovate. _Cure_.

A year later it was flourishing. A year after that, it was changing the city. Four years after Oliver’s death and it could run itself: it didn’t need her.

…Nobody did.

∞

**2019… Present Day, 5am**

“Another bad night?” 

Oliver had already decided any question aimed at him in the next 30 minutes wasn’t worth the effort of an answer.

He’d slept two hours. He’d patrolled for four more. He wasn’t interested in small talk… or any talk. With anyone.

Not after finding himself on that same, empty stretch of road once again; staring out into the night, towards the Starling City exit. Just… longing. For something.

It was driving him crazy; making him feel more awake than he had in... a long time.

Which was why it bother him; sleeping even less than usual. He could take it. “I’m fine.” Knowing John was watching him from where he leaned against the table-top of used automobile parts, Oliver moved towards the shower area-

“You’re fine?” And it was clear how less than impressed Diggle was with him. “You’re sleeping less than before, eating less, feeling less than concerned about the whole thing… but you’re _fine_.”

Subtlety was John Diggle’s strong point.

Sighing, coming to a pause, Oliver looked over his shoulder at his… associate. They’d been friends once, comrades in arms. Now? They just worked together. Separate teams, same goal. “Go home John.” Go _away_. “Go see your little girl, sleep with your wife.” _Live_. “I’m. Fine.”

What was the man even doing down here? In the basement of an abandoned building, with a man who clearly infuriated and disappointed him, when he had a family at home who loved him. Diggle held gold in the palm of his hands.

Oliver didn’t.

Looking anything but reassured - more annoyed than concerned - John lifted up, moving towards the exit. “Her birthday’s coming up.” He called over his shoulder. “It might be nice if you showed up this time.”

Dig’s daughter.

Four. She’d be four years old this time.

And Oliver couldn’t handle it. “…Maybe.” He breathed into the cold air.

“Yeah.” And Diggle knew it was a no. “Right.” Entering the code to the door, John spoke one last time to Oliver’s retreating form. “Team meeting, Friday. I trust you’ll be _there_.” The echo of the door slamming shut followed Oliver through the Foundry lair and it made him stop in front of the sink, made him forcibly remember other sounds, voices. Scents. Smiles.

The tapping of fingers on a keyboard.


End file.
